Eight poems from The Fault, a Work in Progress

by David Solway (October 2024)

 

“What’s up, Doc” he says, chewing on his carrot
with brash insouciance and gentle scorn,
seeming untroubled by a Looney planet.
I hear the darker notes of Keith Jarrett
there on the keyboard where his fingers mourn.
What’s up is sadness, wabbit, so can it!
–
–
In Tananarive or Ulan Bator
things must be better than they are at home
where one must contend with the elevens
or one’s dreams. OK, it’s a metaphor.
Still it articulates the need to roam
far from the bodies rising from the fens.
–
–
Maybe there’s a webpage we can link to,
a world-class site, a superior blog
free of surveillance and supple hackers
(Jeez, how low can these marauders sink to,
creatures of the informational bog?)
to get the lowdown on our hijackers.
–
–
Thing is, one is always under siege. Stick
it to the Stagirite, for all his
stark clarity and philosophic spunk.
The soul is a flesh-bound paraplegic
that’s wheeled between a crossword and a quiz,
slave to hamartia. Who woulda thunk?
–
–
Time heals all wounds, as we’ve been comforted.
Given strength and patience, the cicatrix
of departure, betrayal or disdain
are salved, the fault closed, and then deported.
It doesn’t work that way, save in the flicks.
Time is the wound, flaw, and source of pain.
–
–
I may as well return to the Torah
and the Talmud. Been too long in Sodom
checking the email and the Internet
for all the latest news from Gomorrah.
Now the computer’s crashed and the modem
is Nehushtan. I owe the Lord a debt.
–
–
Said the Shadow: “evil lurks in the hearts
of men”; the imago Dei has been rent.
We know it fully, as did Tony Stark,
our ol’ Tin-Head, a man of many parts
in his red and gold prosthetic raiment.
Being ourselves is no walk in the park.
–
–
If the Word is spoken, the gesture made
when the mind is home to imp and gremlin,
a troubling intention leaves its signature.
True, the message may have been ill-conveyed
or sent from within the neural Kremlin.
In either case, there is no present cure.
–

 

Table of Contents

 

David Solway’s latest book is Crossing the Jordan: On Judaism, Islam, and the West (NER Press). His previous book is Notes from a Derelict Culture, Black House Publishing, 2019, London. A CD of his original songs, Partial to Cain, appeared in 2019.

Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast